MTTR—Mean Time to Respond—separates contained incidents from catastrophic breaches. Perfect detection, telemetry, and dashboards fail if response is slow; attackers win on time. Reducing MTTR compresses the damage window before escalation. Key finding: more alerts overwhelm teams and worsen performance. Better threat intelligence—not alert volume—drives faster, more accurate responses and is the most effective MTTR reduction lever. Intelligence replaces alert fatigue with actionable context.